Rwanda is seeking to increase birth and death registration to 95 and 90 per cent respectively.

This is according to the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) strategy for 2017-2022.

Information collected from birth registration records helps the government to decide where and how to spend money, and what areas to focus on for development programmes, such as education and immunisation.

However, National Institute of Statistics Rwanda’s (NISR) 2020 report indicates that timely registered births fell from 78 percent in 2019 to 72.3 percent in 2020.

As the world celebrates Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day today, August, 10, Rwanda looks to utilising the platform to address the challenges in registration of vital events, particularly births and deaths.

The day is celebrated with the aim of increasing public awareness of the importance of civil registration and vital statistics systems, through a well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems.

This will be the 5th occasion Rwanda joins other African countries for the celebration.

According to a previous publication by The New Times on birth registration, at a minimum, the UN body says that birth registration establishes a legal record of where the child was born and who his or her parents are. Birth registration is required for a child to get a birth certificate – his or her first legal proof of identity. It is considered a right.

According to law 32/2016 of 28/08/2016 governing persons and family, article 62, civil registration is a legally recognised system relating to a particular person from birth to death. Such civil status particulars include birth, death, marriage, divorce, nationality, adoption, guardianship, and legal recognition of children.

So far, birth registration completeness showed a slight decrease from 85.8 per cent in 2020 to 84.2 per cent in 2021, according to NISR’s 2021 report on Rwanda Vital Statistics.

The report indicates that birth registration completeness was slowed down by the effect of the transition from using a paper-based registration system to a digitised registration system at decentralised entities when the government introduced a new system of registering new-born babies.

However, Coivd-19 is shown to also have had a hand in slowing it down.

In celebration of Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day, The government will also launch ‘Recognition and Adoption’ as additional services to be incorporated into the electronic civil registration system.